VI 



A REMARKABLE ANTICIPATION OF 

 MODERN VIEWS ON EVOLUTION 



Reprinted from Science Progress^ New Series, vol. i, no. 3, April, 

 1897. 



Revised : additional foohioies. 



The great pioneer of modern anthropological and 

 ethnological research — James Cowles Prichard, was born 

 at Ross, in Herefordshire, February 11, 1786. The 

 following brief account of his life is taken from an article 

 by Professor E. B. Tylor, F.R.S.^ Prichard was brought 

 up as a member of the Society of Friends, to which body 

 his parents belonged. Rejoined the medical profession, 

 taking his Doctor s degree at Edinburgh, * afterwards 

 reading for a year at Trinity College, Cambridge, whence, 

 joining the Church of England, he migrated to St. John's 

 College, Oxford, afterwards entering as a gentleman 

 commoner at Trinity College, Oxford, but seeking no 

 degree in either university. In 18 10 he settled at Bristol 

 as a physician.' Among his many great achievements in 

 anthropology was the proof ' that the Celtic nations are 

 allied by language with the Slavonian, German, and 

 Pelasgian (Greek and Latin), thus forming a fourth 

 European branch of the Asiatic stock (which would now 

 be called Indo-European or Aryan)'. His treatise on 

 the subject, entitled Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, 

 appeared in 183 1. * It is remarkable that the essay by 

 Adolphe Pictet, De V Affinitd des Langues Celtiques avec 

 le Sanscrit, which was crowned by the French Academy 

 and made its author's reputation, should have been pub- 

 lished in 1837 in evident ignorance of the earlier and in 

 some respects stricter investigations of Prichard.' 



^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1885, vol. xix, pp. 722, 723. 



